Saint Gregory Palamas structures his entire teaching on the human person around the possibility of attaining a direct vision of God through purification, illumination and deification. In other words, Palamite anthropology is, par excellence, ascetic and mystical in nature, and the deified human being is the one who, through unceasing prayer, becomes ‘a partaker of the divine nature’ (2 Peter 1:4).
In Greek, the term for ‘man’, ἄνθρωπος, means ‘one who looks upwards’, signifying that, by virtue of his ontological structure, man is directed towards God. However, for Saint Gregory, ἄνθρωπος means not only ‘he who looks upwards’, but also ‘he through whom the One on High looks’, denoting the deification of man as a manifestation of a theophany. The deified human being is a unique τρόπος of God’s Revelation in the world and in history.
According to Saint Gregory Palamas, the image is the theological principle that keeps alive in man the longing for God. Man has the image of God imprinted upon him through creation, an image which he must bring to a state of likeness to God through faith and good deeds within the atmosphere of the Holy Spirit’s grace. The whole person is permeated by the image, and their entire ontology is of an iconic essence. No separation can be made between the image and the person, for the person is the image. Nevertheless, the Archbishop of Thessaloniki attaches particular importance to the mind, the νοῦς, of which he says:
‘The fact that we know we are made in the image of the Maker does not permit us to deify the intelligible world. For this image does not lie in the constitution of the body, but in the nature of the mind, of which nothing is better by nature. For if there were anything better, it would be found in that ‘in the image’. But since what is best in us is the mind, and this is in the divine image and was created by God, how difficult is it to see—or rather, how is it not evident from this—that the Maker of our rational nature is also the Maker of all that is rational?”1
Saint Gregory Palamas is faithful to Holy Scripture and patristic tradition, according to which man was created in the image of God in order to attain likeness to Him. Through the image of God, he received not only the rational soul, which is akin to God, but also the grace of the Holy Spirit, thus becoming a grace-filled psycho-somatic configuration:
‘The eyes of the angels then beheld the human soul united in sensation and body, and they beheld another god—not merely one fashioned on earth out of divine goodness, himself mind and body, but configured according to the grace of God owing to the abundance of this goodness, so that he himself might be body, mind and spirit, and the soul might possess the quality of being in the divine image and likeness in its entirety, as one who is unified in mind, reason and spirit’2
The expression κατά θεου χάριν μεμορφωμενον expresses a great truth: man was created to live by grace and therefore he can find fulfilment only through the acquisition of grace. Saint Seraphim of Sarov says that ‘the purpose of man’s life is the attainment of the Holy Spirit’. The living soul which God breathed into man is, according to Saint Gregory, ever-living, immortal, rational, and also endowed with divine grace; that is to say, it received at once both life and uncreated grace, through which it can be in communion with God. Through the Fall, he lost grace, but the soul did not permanently lose the power to regain grace. The grace of the Holy Spirit becomes an integral part of human existence. This leads Saint Gregory to state: ‘the spiritual man is composed of three parts: the heavenly grace of the Holy Spirit, the rational soul and the earthly body’ (Triad I, 1,43).
Saint Gregory Palamas is the exponent of a holistic anthropology. For this reason, he does not despise the bodily aspect of man, which, in his view, contributes to the formation of the image of God. Moreover, by virtue of having a body, man bears the image of God more distinctly—that is, to a greater extent than the angels—and his capacity for self-determination and his power to rule over creation bear witness to this fact:
‘Man was made in the image of God more so than the angels, not only because he possesses within himself a sustaining and life-giving power, but also because he exercises dominion. For in the nature of our soul there is, on the one hand, the ruling and governing aspect, and on the other, the serving and obedient aspect’3
Body, soul and spirit
‘Following the Fathers’, it is Saint Gregory Palamas who restores the importance of the body in the process of deification, for deification concerns the whole person. The whole person, as a psycho-somatic being, is united with and partakes of the grace of the Holy Spirit and becomes πνευματικός, a ‘new creation’. ‘The body participates, to a certain extent, in the grace that works according to the spirit,’ says Saint Gregory in Triad 1, Treatise 1, 31.
The body is united with the soul by hypostasis, and this bond is not destroyed by bodily death, as evidenced by the resurrection of every soul into its corresponding body. In Palamite thought, the body contains the soul and the soul contains the body. The soul manifests itself through the body, and the deeds of the body are imprinted upon the soul. For this reason, the ritual manifestation of the body influences the way of thinking, and any mystical vision takes place within the body, owing to the complementarity between asceticism and mysticism – as exemplified by Moses’ veil.
‘The soul, sustaining the body in which it was fashioned, is everywhere within the body, not as in space, nor as that which is contained, but as that which sustains it, encompasses it and brings it to life, being in this respect too in the image of God’4
In man, the soul and the body surround and embrace one another; and therefore, this perichoretic unity between body and soul becomes the indelible argument for ascetic and mystical activity. John Meyendorff states that the Palamite view of the human body represents the most authentic ‘Christian materialism’5, for, although the body is the sensible aspect of human nature, it does not exhaust it nor does it fully reveal it in its manifestation, which leads to an apophatic view of the body.
It is Saint Gregory Palamas who introduces man’s creative power into the concept of the ‘image of God’. In other words, man is created in the ‘image of God’ precisely because he possesses the capacity to create, an ability which neither angels nor demons possess. Consequently, man’s vocation to transfigure and spiritualise matter lies in his capacity to actualise the potentials imprinted by God in creation and to confer upon them an eschatological purpose. Thus, man imitates God in action as well.
Man is created in the ‘image of God’ and, in this respect, possesses the capacity to create—a capacity which neither angels nor demons possess. Consequently, man’s vocation to transfigure and spiritualise matter lies in his capacity to actualise the potentials imprinted by God in creation and to confer upon them an eschatological purpose.
In Homily XXVI, the Archbishop of Thessaloniki explains how God has, in a paradoxical manner, recapitulated (συγκεφαλαιωσάμενος) the whole of creation 6 in man. This concept of man as a microcosm has implications in several dimensions:
- in humankind, the intelligible coexists with the sensible;
- solidarity and interdependence between humankind and the cosmos;
- in the process of deification, man cares for every creature and the whole world in a kind of total compassion, that is, an ‘ecological spiritualisation’.
Regarding the soul, Saint Gregory states that ‘the soul is the entelechy of the organic body, which possesses life in potential’. Commenting on this statement, Father Dumitru Stăniloae points out that the Aristotelian theory of the soul as the entelechy or form of the organic body, through which the body is directed towards its end, was accepted by some of the Church Fathers. The body possesses life in potential, in the sense that it develops or is actualised. And since the soul is linked to the growing organic life, it can be said that the soul, too, is initially largely a potential that develops 7.
‘The soul of every human being is also the life of the body animated by it, and it performs a life-giving function for another—a function which is manifested, that is to say, in the body animated by it. But it possesses life not only as a function, but also as a being, inasmuch as the soul is alive through itself and for itself. For it is shown to possess rational and understanding life, as one that is manifestly distinct from the life of the body and of those who exist through the body. Therefore, even when the body disintegrates, the soul does not disintegrate. Moreover, not only does it not disintegrate, but it also remains immortal, since it is not shown to be for another, but possesses life through itself as a being”8).
To summarise, the life of the body is not its essence, but a function that radiates from the soul; therefore, it withdraws from the body upon the body’s death. The life of an animal’s body, however, does not stem from a soul of its own, but is a radiance emanating from the life of the species, or from the collective life of animals; for this reason, their breath of life does not remain. But the life of the human soul pertains to the human being’s very essence. It is individual or personal, endowing each of us with a personal character. Thus, the human soul exists in and of itself, even after the death of the body.
Saint Gregory Palamas understands death and life within the framework of a relationship between the giver and the receiver. Spiritual death is the estrangement and separation of the soul from God, whilst bodily death is nothing more than the separation of the soul from the body.
Spiritual death is the estrangement and separation of the soul from God, whilst bodily death is nothing more than the separation of the soul from the body.
However, the soul, being life par excellence, bestows it upon the body as a gift. Likewise, God, Life par excellence, bestows eternal life upon man.
Furthermore, following Saint John of Damascus, Saint Gregory speaks of the Trinitarian nature of the soul, which, having been created in the image of the Holy Trinity, Mind, Word and Spirit, is itself mental, rational and spiritual. In his Homily for the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, Saint Gregory Palamas notes that the Epiphany, which took place with the re-creation of man in the waters of the Jordan in the Person of Jesus Christ, is the Trinitarian archetype of the image within our soul. Hence the restorative effect of the Holy Sacrament of Baptism, through which man once again becomes the Trinitarian reflection of God on earth. It should be noted that this Trinitarian composition of the soul does not imply trichotomism, since grace is an uncreated element that sustains the connection between soul and body. For Saint Gregory Palamas, the ‘spirit’ of man is interpreted as ‘intellectual love’ (νοερὸς ἔρως).
‘But the understanding and rational nature of the soul, having been created together with the earthly body, received from God the life-giving spirit through which it holds together and gives life to the body united with it. Through this it is revealed to those who understand that the spirit of man, which gives life to the body, is an understanding love, and that it is of the mind and of the word, and is found in the word and in the mind; and that man possesses the word and the mind in the spirit. For the soul naturally possesses, through the spirit, such a deep bond of love with its body that it never wishes to forsake it, and would never forsake it at all were it not for the compulsion brought about by some very serious illness, or by some external blow’9
Νοῦς and καρδία
In Holy Scripture, the heart encompasses within itself the full richness of the spiritual life, which must embrace the whole person with all their faculties and all their activities. Faithfulness to God reigns supreme within it. Being speculative by nature, it was no coincidence that the Greeks rendered the biblical lev, levav with the term νοῦς. According to Saint Gregory the Theologian, the ‘pure heart’ in Psalm 50:2 is ‘the intellect’ (dianoetikon)10. Whilst through διάνοια (reflection or discursive thought) man can perceive God through created realities, through νοῦς (mind) man contemplates God through the divine, essential and uncreated energies. In the Triad I we read that ‘our heart is the seat of the rational faculty (λογιστικὸν) and the primary rational organ of the body’11).
Furthermore, Holy Scripture provides us with information about the heart’s rational-cognitive capacity: ‘For You have taken understanding from their hearts; therefore You will not raise them up’ (Job 17:4); ‘The fool hath said in his heart, “There is no God!”’ (Psalm LII, 1). Saint Ephrem the Syrian, in one of his Lamentations, says: ‘Strike, O Lord, my breast, which is the dwelling-place of evil thoughts!’
The heart is the source of all human powers—those of the mind, the soul, and both the spiritual and physical faculties. The heart is the principle of the person’s unity, which gives stability to the multiplicity of successive moments of life 12. Therefore, pure prayer is the state of the heart’s faithful openness to God. The mind, having descended into the heart, no longer encounters God through the mediation of ideas, but through the sense of His presence, which enables it to verify in reality what the mind had been thinking. Ideas about God, or the idea of God, are found to be filled, permeated and penetrated by the sense of God’s very reality. Reality takes the place of the idea and, at the same time, verifies it, ‘tests’ it.
…pure prayer is the state of the heart’s faithful openness to God. The mind, having descended into the heart, no longer encounters God through the mediation of ideas, but through the sense of His presence.
‘Therefore, the heart is, for the mind, a kind of sensory organ for the relationship with God, just as the bodily senses are the apparatus that enables the perception and sensation of the realities with which the body comes into contact’13 The spiritual heart is the centre of human existence and, according to Saint Gregory Palamas, it is situated within the physical heart as within an organ, not as within a vessel. Prayer of the heart is either identified with prayer of the mind (noetic prayer) or distinguished from it, depending on the meaning of the word nous. Saint Gregory Palamas, who articulated the entire patristic and ecclesiastical teaching on the hesychastic life, states that the mind—nous—is also called the essence (ousía) of the soul (heart), but also the energy-activity of the soul, which consists in the workings of the thoughts (logismoí). Thus, if we identify the nous with the heart, then we may also identify prayer of the mind with prayer of the heart. However, we must point out that in patristic theology, the nous primarily signifies the most subtle form of attention, which, in the fallen state, is scattered through the senses into creation and is enslaved by reason (logikí) or becomes one with reason, with the passions and the conditions of the surrounding environment. This ‘nous’, when it returns from its dispersion to the heart, works there, and the bodily organ of the heart feels the presence of divine grace, is softened, set ablaze, stirs, is warmed, and transmits the workings of grace to the whole human body.
Ecstasy, rapture of the spirit or mystical vision does not consist in a separation of the mind from the body. The desiring part of the soul is not an obstacle to contemplation, as Varlaam of Calabria maintained. The mind, purified of passions and thoughts, fixed upon God and illuminated by grace, does not see God as something external to itself; rather, the mind is lifted up and beholds itself as in a mirror in which it sees God. In other words, in the mystical vision, God is not the object of knowledge, but becomes the co-subject of knowledge. Although it rises, the mind never departs from itself; this is that circular and spiral movement of which Saint Dionysius the Areopagite speaks, whereby, as it advances in grace, it is and is not closer to God.
Thus, the heart is not merely a bodily organ, but the seat of the affective life, the centre of being in which the spirit dwells: ‘May the eyes of your heart be enlightened’ (Ephesians 1:17–18). This is also the meaning of the ‘descent of the mind into the heart’ in the Jesus Prayer – that of the transition from discursive knowledge to enlightened knowledge. Contemporary science has demonstrated that the heart has its own complex nervous system, consisting of a network of several types of neurons, and that it is the only organ which sends more commands to the brain than it receives from it. Some of the Holy Fathers also spoke of the intelligence of the heart, dismantling the conceptual opposition between mind and heart and developing true theologies of the heart. For Neptic spirituality, the heart denotes the ‘inner man’, of whom Saint Paul the Apostle spoke (2 Corinthians 4:16), in contrast to the ‘outer man’, who leads a superficial life, with fragmentary and limited knowledge 14. In his Spiritual Homilies, Saint Macarius the Egyptian explicitly states that the mind guides the heart, playing the role of the charioteer ‘who prepares the soul’s chariot for battle and keeps thoughts in check’15
For Saint Gregory Palamas, the Christological foundation of the deification of man is the hypostatic union between the divine nature and the human nature in the Single Person of the Logos of God Incarnate in Jesus Christ. However, Saint Gregory distinguishes between the three degrees or modes of union: 1. union according to Essence, which belongs exclusively to the Persons of the Holy Trinity; 2. union according to Hypostasis, which belongs exclusively to the Saviour Jesus Christ; and 3. union according to grace, work or energy, which belongs to those who become partakers of the divine nature not by nature or kinship, but by divine decree.
‘For just as the divinity of the incarnate Word of God is common to both body and soul, deifying the body through the mediation of the soul, so that the works of God are accomplished through the body, so too, in spiritual men, the grace of the Spirit, passing through the soul to the body, enables the body also to partake of the divine and to partake joyfully together with the soul, which partakes of the divine, and which, once it partakes of the divine, also possesses something that is partaking, praiseworthy and divine’16
The pair λόγος/τρόπος, where λόγος is the rightful reason for existence, and τρόπος is the actual state of man in relation to God (similar to Heidegger’s ‘being-in-the-world’-in-the-world), as well as the distinction between δύναμις as potentiality and ἐνέργεια as actuality, are taken up by Saint Gregory from Saint Maximus the Confessor and further refined. ‘Union with Christ is a union through grace, that is, in love. It is not a pantheistic union between Christ and the believer, but a vital union, a union in love, in which Christ and the believer retain their personality’17).
In the deified human being, soteriology and eschatology become simultaneous. The Incarnation of Christ is the archetype of the deification of man. Christ is the eschaton of all humanity, inasmuch as He contains within Himself the rightful fulfilment of human nature. If, through the Incarnation, Christ hypostatised human nature, through deification, man himself hypostatises the uncreated divine life, both in soul and in body, thus becoming homotheos 18 or a partaker of divinity. The place of the deified human being in the hierarchy (ταξις) is immediately after God and above the angels19; proof of this is the Most Holy Mother of God.
‘I have said that for man to know God and to know himself and his station (which even Christians regarded as simple now possess) surpasses the power of knowledge of nature and astronomy and all philosophy relating to them. For the mind that has recognised its own powerlessness has discovered the way to enter into salvation, to draw near to the light of knowledge, and to receive true wisdom, which does not fade away with this age.”
The mind which partakes of the work of divine grace and is deemed worthy of that blessed light also imparts to the transitory body many qualities of divine beauty, mediating between divine grace and the body subject to corruption. Thus, even in this life, the body of those who strive partakes of the grace which God bestows upon the mind. The mind, by partaking of divine grace, lifts the whole person up to God and imprints the body—which is united with it—with the mark of holiness, signifying the spirit’s assumption of the body in the age to come. All future blessings, which transcend the sensory realm, become spiritually intelligible even in this life. The mind, receiving these blessings first, then communicates them to the body and to the whole being of man.
The deification of man is thus identified with participation in the life of God. Through communion with the life of God, whether ‘sensually’ or ‘rationally or mentally’, the life of a holy person becomes ‘God-beholding or deified’. The deified person becomes ‘divine, or ordained by God, or a bearer of God, or even God’ (μικρο-θεος):
‘The work of Christ encompasses human nature, which He recapitulates in His hypostasis. The work of the Holy Spirit, on the other hand, encompasses persons, addressing each one of them. The Holy Spirit imparts to the human hypostases in the Church the fullness of divinity in a unique, personal manner, appropriated by each human being as a person created in the image of God’20”.
This dynamic way of communicating Himself to creatures, without being exhausted as a Trinity of Persons united in the boundless affection of perfect love, has been expressed by Orthodox theology through the doctrine of the uncreated energies, through which God gives Himself in His entirety, yet always in different ways and without exhausting Himself, whilst ever manifesting the same love. But as God communicates Himself ever more fully through these energies, in accordance with the capacity of those able to know them, not only does He never exhaust Himself, but He also thereby elevates the saints to ever higher levels of spiritual knowledge and experience. Therefore, the saints will progress infinitely in partaking of these in the life to come, or in communion with God, without ever coming to encompass them in their entirety, to become sated with divinity, or to grow weary of a monotony in experiencing it.
- 1
Saint Gregory Palamas, ‘150 Chapters on Natural Knowledge, on the Knowledge of God, on the Moral Life and on Creation’, in The Philokalia, vol. VII, trans., intro. and notes by Rev. Prof. Dumitru Stăniloae, eibmbor, Bucharest, 1977, p. 439.
- 2
Saint Gregory Palamas, The Second Discourse on Proof, p. 85.
- 3
Saint Gregory Palamas, ‘150 Chapters on Natural Knowledge, on the Knowledge of God, on the Moral Life and on Action’, in the Philokalia, vol. VII, p. 468.
- 4
Saint Gregory Palamas, ‘150 Chapters on Natural Knowledge, on the Knowledge of God, on the Moral Life and on Creation’, in Philokalia, vol. VII, p. 467.
- 5
John Meyendorff, Introduction to the Study of Gregory Palamas, Patristica Sorbonensia 3, Paris, Seuil, 1959, p. 222; see also John Meyendorff, A Study of Gregory Palamas, trans. George Lawrence, Faith Press, New York, 1974², p. 156.
- 6
Saint Gregory Palamas, ‘Homily XXVI. Delivered at the time of the harvest; in which [there is also mention] of the spiritual harvest’, in Homilies, vol. II, ed. Fr. Dragoș Bahrim, trans. Fr. Roger Coresciuc, Doxologia Publishers, Iași, 2020, pp. 69–78.
- 7
Saint Gregory Palamas, ‘150 Chapters on Natural Knowledge, on the Knowledge of God, on the Moral Life and on Action’ in the Philokalia, vol. VII, p. 426.
- 8
Saint Gregory Palamas, ‘150 Chapters on Natural Knowledge, on the Knowledge of God, on the Moral Life and on Creation’ in the Philokalia, vol. VII, p. 442.
- 9
Saint Gregory Palamas, ‘150 Chapters on Natural Knowledge, on the Knowledge of God, on the Moral Life and on Creation’, in The Philokalia, vol. VII, pp. 448–449.
- 10
Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio, 40, 39, PG 36, 416AB.
- 11
Saint Gregory Palamas, Triads, 1, 2, 3.8–10, 396 (81.11–3).
- 12
Tomáš Špidlík, The Spirituality of the Christian East – Volume I: A Systematic Manual, trans. Deacon Ioan I. Ică Jr., Deisis Publishing, Sibiu, ²2005, pp. 145–147.
- 13
Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae, The Jesus Prayer and the Experience of the Holy Spirit, Deisis Publishers, Sibiu, ²2003, p. 69.
- 14
Placide Deseille, The Ways of the Heart: The Spiritual Teachings of the Holy Fathers, trans. Felicia Dumas, Doxologia, Iași, 2020, pp. 201–206.
- 15
Saint Macarius the Egyptian, ‘The 50 Spiritual Homilies’, XL, 5, in: PSB, vol. 34, trans. Rev. Prof. Dr Constantin Cornițescu, with an introduction, index and notes by Rev. Prof. Dr Nicolae Chițescu, EIBMBOR, Bucharest, 1992, p. 253.
- 16
Saint Gregory Palamas, ‘A Discourse for Those Who Find Peace through Piety. The Second of the Last. ‘On Prayer’”, in The Philokalia, vol. VII, trans., with an introduction and notes by Rev. Prof. Dumitru Stăniloae, eibmbor, Bucharest, 1977, p. 238.
- 17
†Metropolitan Nicolae Mladin, Asceticism and Pauline Mysticism, Deisis Press, Sibiu, 1996, p. 227.
- 18
Reuben Demetrios Harper, ‘Becoming Homotheos: St Gregory Palamas’ Eschatology of the Body’, in Triune God: Incomprehensible but Knowable — The Philosophical and Theological Significance of St Gregory Palamas for Contemporary Philosophy and Theology, Constantinos Athanasopoulos (ed.), Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015, pp. 232–245.
- 19
Robert E. Sinkewicz, The One Hundred and Fifty Chapters: A Critical Edition, Translation and Study, Studies and Texts 83, Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, Toronto, 1988, p. 24.
- 20
Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, trans. Vasile Raducă, Bonifaciu Publishers, 1998, p. 63.